Sunday, 16 December 2018

How Leavers can believe that a People’s Vote is anti-democratic

How many times have
you heard Brexiters, or Theresa May, argue that to hold a second
referendum is impossible because people have already had a vote. The
people have decided and the government is carrying out their
instructions. To hold another referendum would break that contract
between the people and government, and would as a result destroy the
people’s faith in democracy. And so on. Some even say flatly that
it is anti-democratic.

When people put
forward similar arguments I have found that a good question to ask is
this. Suppose that the polls showed 99% of people thought Brexit was
now a mistake: would you still insist that we should not hold another
referendum, and go ahead with Brexit? Replying of
course not allows you to repeat the question with a smaller
percentage. The moment they say that isn’t a big enough percentage,
you can simply ask why 52% was good enough to hold a referendum but
some higher percentage is not enough to justify asking the question again.

For this reason most have argued with me that even if 99% of people didn’t want Brexit
today, it should still go ahead because of the 2016 vote. This is the logic behind the view put forward by most of those who
would deny another vote, because their argument is never qualified by
referring to current public opinion. A vote has been taken, a
decision has been made, and now parliament has to enact that decision
to retain faith in democracy. Thus a second referendum, in their
eyes, can be anti-democratic.

If you, like me,
think it cannot be right to not have a second referendum if 99% of
people, or even 56%, no longer want Brexit, you are of course right.
The problem with their argument is that the people in 2016 cannot
bind the people in 2019. In most cases they will be the same people,
but those same people have a right - a democratic right - to change
their mind. This right is absolute, in the sense that people are not
required to justify why they have changed their mind.

At this point the
argument usually turns to comparisons to general elections. Once a
government is elected, it cannot be thrown out just because the
public starts disliking the government (as they used to do,
regularly, 2 or so years after being elected). Just as in a general
election people vote for a government to last 5 years, so a
referendum result on a particular issue must last unchallenged for a
certain number of years.

Except, of course,
general elections do not necessarily last five years. MPs can decide
on a general election if a certain majority want it (as perhaps we
may be about to find out). In exactly the same way, MPs can
legitimately decide to hold a second referendum. There seems to be a
view that because the 2016 referendum was around 40 years after the
previous one, that is some kind of rule, but one observation does not
make a rule.

Equally it does not
matter in the slightest that David Cameron in his wisdom said the
2016 referendum was for a generation. Just as a vote in 2016 cannot
bind people 3 years later, the words of David Cameron certainly
should not bind MPs 3 years later. We know that an awful lot of what
was said in that referendum was a complete lie.

Cameron has a great
deal to answer for in this matter. Not just holding the referendum
itself, or saying things like the result would hold for a generation,
but also allowing a form of words which left the Leave side
completely free to propose whatever type of post-Brexit arrangements
took their fancy. It was an open invitation to the Leave side to make
up tall stories about the arrangements they could negotiate with the
EU, and the Leave side accepted the invitation gleefully. In many
respects the need for a second referendum on the negotiated deal was
inevitable given the open-ended Leave option in the first.

To argue, as some
do, that nothing much has changed in more than two years is
laughable. We now know many things that were not clear in 2016.
Turkey is not about to join the EU. The OBR have said that Brexit
will mean less money for public services, and the government has
accepted that projection. (So less, not more, money for the NHS etc.)
Doing a deal with the EU is not the easiest in history: it took 2
years just to get a withdrawal agreement. That agreement requires the
UK to effectively stay in the Customs Union because of the Good
Friday agreement: hardly discussed in the referendum, and then
dismissed as Project Fear. And so on and on.

So it makes sense to
hold a referendum on the withdrawal agreement for those reasons
alone. Those arguments are helped by the polls,
which for about a year have shown a majority to Remain and a widening
gap of late. (Again I have been told the polls conflict and are neck
and neck, and in characteristic Leave style this is just false. As
this mapping
over time of 100 polls show, Remain has been consistently ahead of
Leave for over a year, and the gap has been steadily widening. This
is despite neither of the two main parties championing Remain.) I have been told that polls are unreliable, which is why we have actual votes and why MPs feel they need a referendum on the withdrawal agreement rather than revoking it themselves.

Just as MPs can
choose to hold a general election at any time they want, they can
hold a referendum at any time they want. People have a democratic
right to change their mind. This right is absolute, but it becomes
obvious why there should be this right when you have a referendum
based on fantasies that look nothing like the reality that has
emerged. There is a different argument about a second referendum: not
that it is anti-democratic but that it would be dangerous or
unfortunate. That will have to wait until another post.
You cannot blame people for arguing that the 2016 referendum result must be enacted and cannot be rescinded, because they are being told this by newspapers and politicians all the time. Which is a very irresponsible thing for newspapers and politicians to do, because it embeds within a minority that were once a majority a view that parliamentary democracy has somehow cheated them of something that was rightfully theirs. If we do get another referendum, those same politicians and newspapers are sure to play to this idea of being cheated that they have themselves fostered. This is why it is important for everyone else to keep saying that a basic part of democracy is allowing people to change their minds.

And what happens when Remains win, would you agree to have referendum every three years forever. What about Quebec or Scotland, referendum every ten years ? What about East Anglia, no one asking their opinion since Heptarchy era ? Soon we will spend all time and energy questioning past decisions instead of move on.

Judge and Jury, Politicians and General make decisions all times, many irreversible. For decisions to have any value, it must have consequences. Changing Brexit before it even enacted is making all voting lose value. Britons have voted Brexit, it must be enacted, consequences good or bad must be swallowed. Then only then, after strong evidences appears, then people can make decisions again

If Cameron had won 52% to 48%, but opinion had now swung against him there is no way that there would be a second referendum. Most certainly not if 56% now favoured Leave and highly unlikely if 99% favoured Leave.

What you are proposing here is asymmetric democracy. But there is no such thing as asymmetric democracy. We either have democracy or we have none at all.

"The moment they say that isn’t a big enough percentage, you can simply ask why 52% was good enough to hold a referendum but some higher percentage is not enough to justify asking the question again."

You should be embarrassed to argue this. Are you saying that once we hold a referendum then immediately the opinion shifts against the original percentage we should vote again? So are you suggesting that we hold a 'People's vote' but we should hold a new one every time that people's opinions shift against the outcome?

If you can't do better than this then you should keep quiet. You are an embarrassment to your profession.

Careful with arguments from opinion polls. The Remain majority you quote is to the question “In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU?” It’s not possible to conclude an intention today from what someone would have preferred to have occurred in the past. I certainly know people who voted Remain in 2016 who would be reluctant to participate in a second vote. That question also ignores the sizeable number of don’t knows. The latest poll-of-polls (Kantar, 6 Dec) for the question “If there was another referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, how would you vote?” gives 36% remain, 33% leave, 31% don’t know. Responses to 3-way questions (deal, no deal, remain) do not show a decisive remain majority (even ignoring don’t knows) and the proportion rejecting any form of Brexit falls still further if more options are added. There is evidence for a small shift in public opinion but not yet for a decisive conclusion that “the people have changed their minds”. That may of course change and I’ve not yet seen poll results following last week’s events, but equally we’ve not yet had a referendum campaign and last time Leave gained several points during that.

There is another, longer-term, problem with “the people have changed their minds” argument. A referendum with a Remain victory does not guarantee that views would not subsequently reverse. If lives do not improve, or we hit the next recession or another EU-related crisis, Leave could again become popular. Do we then want yet another vote, in a “neverendum”? We need stronger grounds than opinion polls. If Parliament hits an impasse, then the case for passing the question back to the electorate will be strong, but I would prefer a general election as there’s more at stake than just Brexit.

“So it makes sense to hold a referendum on the withdrawal agreement for those reasons alone. Those arguments are helped by the polls, which for about a year have shown a majority to Remain and a widening gap of late.”

But Remain have been continuously campaigning against the Referendum result for 2 and half years, whereas Leave have not countered their view because they don’t wish to conceded that the issue is still open. Effectively, the opposition have left the football field but Remain have still failed to score a goal.

You are happy to tell us that the Leavers have been irresponsibly influenced by the popular press, but if the blatant histrionics of the Bank of England cause a shift of opinion the other way then that apparently is true democracy. Your capacity for double standards never ceases to amaze.

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